


autonomic

by tanyart



Series: tread lightly [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Phantom pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-09-01 00:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8600794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tanyart
Summary: Prompts: (a) things you said through your teeth, (b) things you said with no space between us





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from tumblr, sorry! I tend to post less edited stuff on my writeblog @[lyricalt](http://lyricalt.tumblr.com/).
> 
> edit: (4/19) Please keep in mind this was written before lore released that Genji was in Blackwatch! Thanks.

Medical has cleared McCree weeks ago.  The physical therapists say he’s more than ready to be on the field again, that he has full function of both his arms, equal and bilaterally.  He no longer needs pain pills or nerve suppressants to get through the day.  He passes every test Reyes throws at him on the firing range, the practice mat, the black site. His aim is as accurate as it had been, months before the fuck up that took his arm. **  
**

McCree lies on his cot, trying to even out his breathing.  He’s got his right hand clenched tight around his left arm, fingers digging above the elbow where he still has skin and muscle.  The rest of the arm is all mechanical.  He knows this.  He’s _known_ this for the past two months, but the pain is still there, clinging on despite his efforts to convince his body there’s nothing there anymore.  He makes the left arm turn into a fist, fingers curling inwards one by one, and it obeys—all in perfect working order.  It doesn’t twitch or jerk like it’s hurt.  It’s maddening, not wanting the pain but still wanting the physical responses of pain.

McCree lets out a soft hiss, more out of frustration than anything else his arm feels.  He allows himself that much before clamping his mouth shut.

Genji is silent in his own corner of their Tokyo safehouse.  His head moves as if reading something within his helmet.  Reports.  Mission updates.  New orders.  His armor glows a soft green, casting eerie shadows in their shared room.  This mission belongs to him, his leads, and so he is unusually quiet tonight.

He has told McCree that he doesn’t mind the company.  They had stepped off the plane together, chatty and amiable, but McCree knows Genji bristles at the idea of having a Blackwatch agent shadow him, much in the same way McCree chafes at Overwatch’s administration wanting to play quality control with _him._  It’s all very clever—Overwatch Control pairs them up, knowing he and Genji comfortable with each other, that they won’t be at each other’s throats.  Any rivalry that sparks between them can only end with better results.

They are friends, sure, but at the end of the day Genji will make his report to Strike-Commander Morrison, and McCree will debrief with Reyes.  Always keeping tabs on each other, as they do.

 _“Make sure they beg for you to come back,”_ Reyes had told him, because it had taken a lot of favors, a lot of dirty paperwork to get back in Overwatch’s good graces; get that new left arm, get that physical therapy, get him back up to mark—just so McCree doesn’t end up in that prison cell that’s been waiting for him.  Even after all these years it still has his name on it.

It’s an old, familiar fear.  That prison cell will always have him marked.  McCree doubts Genji will rat him out, not like this, but fears have little use for logic.  A man who still shudders from a phantom pain after months of the best rehab the UN can afford is nothing but a wasted liability.  It puts just as much pressure on Genji as it does on him, maybe even more.

Clever again, that Overwatch sends McCree on a mission where Genji will be drawing up leads on the Shimada clan.  He will be less than forgiving if McCree is lacking in any way.

So McCree keeps his mouth shut, his left arm still.  He dreams of it getting torn off again, and again.

* * *

McCree wakes up, covered in sweat.  His chest heaves and he moves to press his palm against his left arm again.  He lets go, quick, and notices Genji staring at him from across the room.

“S’nothing,” he says, but his voice comes out slurred with exhaustion.

“Have you taken anything for the pain?” Genji asks.  His voice comes out flat, unamused, in a way that implies something cold and calculating.  A man with a clipboard, marking nothing but mistake after mistake.

“Shit, Genji.  Of course not,” McCree says, snappish, but at least it’s not slurred.  “No narcotics.  Scan me if you want.”

Genji pauses. His bed covers rustle as he shifts his weight.

“Not even Tylenol?” Genji drawls, like he is sharing an inside joke.

For a moment, McCree wonders if he’s imagining things, if the pain is screwing with him, making him short-tempered and on edge.  

McCree laughs, hollowly.  He doesn’t even want to admit to a headache if he has to.  “You’re a hoot and half, you know that?”

Genji doesn’t reply.  He gets up from his cot, footsteps silent as he makes his way to McCree.  McCree watches him, wary, as Genji stands over him, looking down.

He resists the urge to curl up.  Genji’s stance is relaxed, head tilting in a thoughtful manner, but McCree can’t help but feel as if he is being scanned for defects.  He doesn’t know if Genji has such a function— _likely not_ —but there’s no way to tell, and no polite way to ask.

He nearly jumps when Genji kneels beside him, quick and sudden.  All the grace in the world is on Genji’s side, but his movements have never been made to be gentle.  He touches McCree’s metal arm, insistent.

“May I see it?” Genji asks, and it sounds like a demand rather than a request.  Something left over from his days as a spoiled prince of an empire.

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” McCree says, but a second later he relents under Genji’s faceless stare.  “But knock yourself out.”

He is about to take the arm off himself, but Genji’s fingers brush against his skin, against the edge of the prosthetic.  McCree’s right hand hovers over Genji’s, a little too late and unwilling to take over.  Genji presses against the clasps and buttons, pulls at the cords and wires.  It’s a rough hackjob at removing the arm, but there must have been some type of ingrained knowledge on Genji’s part.  It hurts, but it doesn’t damage the arm. McCree bites back another hiss.  Genji turns off the nerve sensors, and the tips of McCree’s metal fingers go numb first, spreading all the way up to his arm until McCree feels truly without it.

Genji pulls off the prosthetic and puts it to the side.  His visor points down at McCree’s residual limb, his stare lingering over the unbroken skin.  It’s clean and scarless, completely healed. The lights over Genji’s armor dims, but before McCree can guess what it could mean, Genji stands up.

“Wait a moment, please,” Genji says, leaving McCree’s side.

McCree flinches, pain flaring up, a thousand imaginary pinched nerves.  It is somehow worse without the prosthetic.  He draps his right arm over his eyes, shutting them tight.  He can hear Genji rummage for something in the room, clattering oddly loud.  The end of McCree’s cot thumps with something heavy, and when McCree opens his eyes, Genji is leaning over him.

“Lift your hand up,” Genji says, and makes a noise of impatience when McCree moves his right arm.  “No.  The left one.”

McCree turns his head, suspicious of a trick.  That maybe Genji might be playing some kind of sick joke at his expense.  “There’s nothing there.”

“Lift.  Your.  Hand,” Genji repeats, and he doesn’t sound kind.

McCree frowns, rattled by Genji’s tone. It’s angry and bitter, and though McCree has a feeling it’s not directed towards anyone in particular, he would rather not be caught in the crossfire of Genji’s erratic temper.  

He lifts the residual limb, remembering to not compensate for the missing weight.

Genji takes it, and slips on another prosthetic over the rest of upper arm.

McCree braces himself for the shock of nerves firing and hooking up to the circuits that allow him to control the arm, but it never comes.  He takes another look at the prosthetic, brow furrowing.  He tries moving the left arm but it only lays there in Genji’s hands, stiff and lifeless.

Genji glances at him.  “It’s only plastic.”

There’s none of the fancy tech Blackwatch outfitted him with, not even the most basic controls.  McCree thinks Genji might have pulled it off a training dummy, or a mannequin.  It’s utterly useless.

Genji lays out the arm with exaggerated slowness.  The joints of the elbow squeaks, almost comically, if McCree hadn’t gritted his teeth.

“Where does it hurt?” Genji asks, gesturing to the artificial arm.  His hand holds its wrist, thumb circling the plastic indent where a pulse would have been.

McCree looks at Genji’s hand, idling noticing how the silicone bends under Genji’s touch.  He doesn’t shiver.  Not quite.  “There’s nothing there,” he repeats.  “I don’t feel it.”

Genji’s thumb stops circling, his hand drawing back.  Another stab of pain shoots up McCree’s left arm.  His wrist throbs, somehow missing the imaginary touch of Genji’s fingers.  He inhales, sharp and quick.

“Where,” Genji echoes in return, each word precise and measured, “does it hurt?”

McCree hisses out the last of his breath, lets the confession slip through his clenched teeth.  “My forearm, below the elbow.”

Genji places his hands over the spot. It’s not the sound of skin touching skin, and McCree closes his eyes, trying to stamp down how unsettling it feels— _doesn’t_ feel.

“You need to watch.”

McCree turns before he opens his eyes.  He shifts his body to the side and lets his gaze line down the artificial limb. In the darkness of the room and the glow from Genji’s lights, he could easily mistake it for his real arm.  The pale silicone becomes overwashed with gray and green, the color of dead, rotted flesh.

Genji presses down.  The plastic straining makes a noise like bones creaking.  McCree winces.

He wants to believe he’s sound in mind— _relatively_ sound, all things considering.  He doesn’t easily indulge in fantasies or impossible dreams.  He puts his faith in facts, and knows when to be practical-minded when it counts the most. McCree is well aware he isn’t the smartest guy around, but it should be simple, so easy, to know that he no longer has his left arm.  He shouldn’t have to convince himself—but he’s not supposed to feel it, or see it laid bare across his cot.

Genji is asking him to pretend, and McCree doesn’t think he has to.  

“Is it like this for you?  But all over?” he asks.  He might be delusional.

Genji’s hands scrape over his arm, running down the flexible casing with deliberate slowness.  He doesn’t answer McCree, head bent low to watch his own motions.  Studying it, as if McCree’s arm had been real skin and muscle, but Genji will never know about the deep callouses on McCree’s thumb and trigger finger.  He will never get to see the scar along McCree’s forearm, or the burn marks across his knuckles.  Those parts of McCree are gone, along with the stories he could have told, if this had been a different kind of night.

Genji shifts from his seat, easing down from the cot to the floor so that he can be eye level with McCree.  It gives him a better angle to trail his palm down the bend of McCree’s elbow.  McCree thinks nothing of the way Genji draws nearer.  It’s only another small detail, when Genji already has him by the hand, and McCree starts to imagine how cool Genji’s armor might feel against his burning skin.

“You used to shoot with this arm,” Genji says.  He bends the prosthetic by the elbow, drawing out a stuttering sigh from McCree.  “You were left-handed.”  

“Didn’t like the feel of the gun when I held it,” McCree admits, quiet.  “Figured I’d be better off learning to use my right hand instead.”

“Two months,” Genji says, pausing.  His fingers are wrapped around McCree’s hand, elbows propped on the edge of the cot.  “You were on medical leave for two months.”

“Shows what a little grit and elbow grease can do for you,” McCree says.  And a whole bunch of unnamed fears, but he doesn’t need to mention that. “Could have been ambidextrous, now that I think about it.”

“Could have,” Genji agrees, tilting his head.  An inch or two more to the side, and he could have rested the side of his face in McCree’s palm.  He pushes the artificial limb back into the cot, the motion so smooth and easy McCree doesn’t feel a single thing.

It’s a brief respite, but his breathing as evened out minutes ago.  Genji traces an invisible line down the arm with his thumb—it could have been a vein, or scar, or ridge of muscle.

“Can’t imagine what you had to go through,” McCree says, pressing once more. He tries not to think about it, but he wonders if there had been anyone to push and pull the mechanical parts of Genji’s body, map it out as if it still had flesh and veins instead of circuits and wires.

“No, you can’t,” Genji says, stopping below McCree’s wrist.  “But it still hurts you, does it not?”

McCree shakes his head.  Some fanciful part of him pretends to move his left arm, letting Genji’s fingers curl over his palm.  “Not right now, it doesn’t.”

Genji stares at him.  McCree can see him shift slightly, adjusting his weight on his heels.  The green visor flickers for a second, and Genji places his hands above McCree’s elbow, undoing the clasps of the prosthetic.

“Good,” he says, and his fingers are cold against McCree’s skin, just like how he’d imagine it. “I’m glad I could be of some help.”

The prosthetic slips off, and Genji sets it aside, below the bed.  One elbow is still propped against the cot, idle hand furrowing over the bedsheets.  His fingers are over the empty space where McCree’s palm would have rested.  But maybe that’s only coincidence, and another different kind of imaginary hurt.

McCree lets out a rueful laugh, shutting his eyes for sleep to finally take him.  

“More than you know.”


End file.
